Regulation
Madison County Approves Regulations on Crypto Mining Facilities
MARSHALL – One week later The Buncombe County Board of Commissioners Extended Its Moratorium on Cryptocurrency/Data Processing Operations for One Year on May 7, Madison County commissioners took a different option, choosing instead to approve amendments to the land use ordinance to include language regulating these facilities.
Madison County established a one-year moratorium on June 13, 2023 to allow time to include provisions in the county’s land use ordinance, which made no mention of such facilities at the time .
With its moratorium set to expire next month, the county unanimously approved a resolution authored by Development Services Director Brad Guth to include language changes to land use ordinances reflecting waste treatment facilities. data.
On March 19, the county planning board met to consolidate its draft language into its land use ordinance relating to these facilitiesand approved the recommended changes which he forwarded to the commissioners.
The Madison County Board of Commissioners, at its May 14 meeting, unanimously approved the planning board’s recommendations.
“Data processing facilities are just one sort of group of uses that a lot of people think of as cryptomining, but any type of industrial computer server or use would fall under the Data Processing Facilities land use data,” Guth said.
According to Guth, as for county biomass facility definitionthe regulations recommended by the Data Processing Facilities Planning Council were based on a number of criteria, including size.
A small data processing facility would represent less than 10,000 square feet of server space.
Small data processing facilities would be permitted in commercial districts and large facilities would be permitted in industrial districts.
The Planning Board’s draft text listed a number of requirements related to height, separation of uses, submission requirements, access, security fencing, screening, utility notification , signaling and noise.
The Planning Board’s recommended changes to the land use ordinance included a minimum of 8 feet in height. The structures themselves must not exceed 35 feet. All electrical wiring must be located underground.
Additionally, the entire perimeter of the facility must be protected from adjacent properties by a buffer strip.
The facilities will be subject to the Madison County Noise Ordinance and are not expected to disrupt operations of adjacent land uses.
The resolution approved by the commissioners states in part that “the development and regulation of data processing facilities is essential to supporting the economic development and technological advancement of Madison County.”
Board Comments
Board member Jeremy Hensley asked Guth if any potential applicant had contacted the county about possibly locating a data processing facility in Madison, to which Guth responded no.
Guth said the county’s intentions to include language-regulating data processing facilities were also spurred by the response of western North Carolina residents in Cherokee, the westernmost county in the state with hundreds of thousands of acres of unstable forest and few land regulations. where residents were outraged in 2019, after cryptocurrency mines began setting up and filled the day and night with the hum and whir of industrial fans.
Other problems include the local landfill struggling with large quantities of electronic waste and polystyrene packaging materials.
At the March meeting of the Madison County Planning Board, Chris Joyell, director of healthy communities for MountainTrue, who has worked with Cherokee County and its three existing facilities, said e-waste and polystyrene waste were the two most serious problems at Cherokee County facilities.
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Vice President Michael Garrison praised Guth for his work on the settlement.
“The use of separation and perimeters draws a pretty definitive line that if you have one, you’re not going to have it in someone’s backyard,” Garrison said.
But board member Bill Briggs said he felt the 10,000 square foot figure was too high a number to limit the size of a small facility.
“Ten thousand square feet is not a small place,” Briggs said. “And it’s supposed to be a small facility.”
Guth made a distinction between a small data processing facility and a residential house.
“It’s not necessarily small compared to your house,” Guth said.
Briggs questioned whether the county could prohibit all applicants from establishing data processing facilities within Madison County boundaries, but Guth said that would not be possible.
“We can’t rule anything out,” Guth said. “There has to be a place in our ordinance that would allow them to set up. Now you can change the zones that you have it in, in the current ordinance, and only allow them in your industrial zone, if it is something that would be more restrictive.
“But the planning committee and the task forces that worked on this project felt they could have enough buffer and control so that it wouldn’t have a negative impact on other businesses in the commercial areas that we have – which are also very limited – so it’s not like these things are necessarily going to be installed next to someone’s house.
Johnny Casey covered Madison County for The Citizen Times and The News-Record & Sentinel for three years. He won first place in the news reporting category at the 2023 North Carolina Press Association awards. He can be reached at 828-210-6074 or jcasey@citizentimes.com.